The First Look Into a Trump Administration Shelter for Migrant Boys Is Deeply Disturbing

The Trump administration has made its stance on Latino immigrants clear from the day that Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, declaring Mexican immigrants in particular as “bringing drugs” and “crime” and sending “rapists” over the border. As a hallmark of his campaign, Trump vowed to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico (alas, no luck yet). In April, President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions made good on this bleak view of brown people, enacting a “zero tolerance” policy on undocumented immigrants crossing the border into the U.S.—the vast majority of whom come from Central America—vowing to prosecute as many people as legally possible, including those seeking asylum from violence or persecution in their home countries. The fallout of this nationalist crackdown? About 1,400 children being separated from their parents and families since October alone.

Last night, MSNBC reporter Jacob Soboroff got a first glimpse at how some of those children—deemed “unaccompanied minors”—are living at a government-contracted facility in Brownsville, Texas, and what he and other journalists saw is deeply disturbing. After being invited in by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency tasked with handling undocumented children, Soboroff reported that about 1,500 migrant boys age 10 to 17 are “effectively incarcerated” at the Casa Padre shelter, a former Walmart that has been pushed to capacity by the new “zero tolerance” policy, with boys sleeping five to a room and spending 22 hours a day indoors. Soboroff reported on the Today show on Thursday that some of the boys are being treated for mental health issues.

“I have been inside a federal prison and county jails. This place is called a shelter, but these kids are incarcerated,” Soboroff tweeted. “No cells and no cages, and they get to go to classes about American history and watch Moana, but they’re in custody.” Specifically, Soboroff shared photographs of boys called to a cafeteria to eat in shifts, appearing to show wristbands scanned by officials when taking their meals.

In another photo shared by Soboroff and later released by HHS, there is a mural of President Trump’s face on the wall that bears the phrase: “Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.”

The private nonprofit Southwest Key, licensed by the government to operate Casa Padre, told The Washington Post: “We’re trying to do the best that we can taking care of these children. Our goal ultimately is to reunite kids with their families . . . We’re not a detention center . . . What we operate are shelters that take care of kids. It’s a big, big difference.”

Soboroff credits Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon for paving the way for reporters to gain entry to Casa Padre: Merkley attempted to visit Casa Padre two weeks ago and was turned away by local police. After going inside a processing center in McAllen, Texas, Merkley told *The Nation:* “The parents are beside themselves not knowing what happened to their kids, and they never know if they’ll see them again. The kids are going through the second version of trauma . . . they get to the border, and they think, Finally, we’re safe. But instead they’re put into this prison-like facility and separated and put through this new drama.“

This dark first look into the U.S.’s largest detention facility for migrant children begs many urgent questions: If this is what the HHS is allowing reporters and the public to see, what is happening at the undisclosed locations we don’t have access to? As Soboroff noted on Today: What about the children under age 10? What about the babies and the girls? On Tuesday, a Honduran woman said federal officials took her baby daughter from her while she was breastfeeding at a detention center in McAllen. When she refused to let her go willingly, she was handcuffed. These horrors are sadly unsurprising, given the Trump administration’s open hostility toward Latino immigrants. But the questions swirling around the U.S.’s treatment of migrant families now demand answers.

“Babies and toddlers are being taken from their parents and put . . . where? Who is caring for them and how?” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tweeted last night. “We need to see inside those facilities. Now.”